Montrealer Yuli Sato spends her time creating photographs of unseen other worlds with an assortment of thrifted vintage cameras. Yuli studies at Concordia University. Her photos are haunting but beautiful, often taking place in deserted snowy forests, upon grassy hilltops, or in empty indoor swimming pools. Yuli talks to WORN about butterfly clips, school uniforms and chai lattes.

What’s the last fashion publication you read?
Lula, but I haven’t actually looked through it thoroughly yet even though I got it a few months ago. I love the overall aesthetic; they’re not as concerned with showing the clothes in a commercial way and its general mood lures me in. I also dig the interviews.

How has your style changed since elementary school?
Quite a bit. I grew up in the ’90s, so I was obsessed with wearing those woven plastic necklaces. Platform sneakers and butterfly clips were also big for me. I think I was a little too young to really get the full effect of the ’90s, but my sister is three years older and was such a ’90s teen - it was so fantastic. She rocked bell-bottom jeans, cropped tanks and flannel.

I’ve been trying to move toward a more classic look lately, so I only buy things I know I will like in five or ten years, as opposed to something super trendy. If I ever feel like dressing a little crazy, I’ll shop at a thrift store so I don’t feel guilty if I don’t end up liking things in the long run. I just bought an amazing Navajo print blazer, a floral maxi dress, black maxi skirt, and a few giant men’s sweaters at Goodwill for less than $20.

How did attending a boarding school with uniforms affect your personal style?
There wasn’t much room for having fun and experimenting. It was so easy getting up and throwing on knee-high socks, a skirt, polo and blazer, but it definitely got boring after a while. It certainly made me appreciate fashion more - in my first year of university I wore a lot of crazy outfits to make up for lost time.

Heels or flats?
Heels if I could wear them every day. Alas, my feet cannot handle wearing heels so I suppose I’ll have to say flats, though I’m trying to train myself to wear heels at night so I don’t come home and collapse from foot pain.

If you had to dress like a lunchbox item, what would it be and what would you wear?
An extra large chai latte: all neutrals and maybe a light colored beret!

What is your favorite photo series? Why is it special?
“Ghost” from 2009. I wanted something creepy but still nostalgic and beautiful. It was a cold, November weekend and my good friend Amanda (the model in the series) and I went to my house on the Ottawa River and worked for two days straight, waking up at 7 a.m. to take photos by the river, then going over to our family friend’s place to shoot in their huge old house.

Where do you find inspiration for your photography?
At the moment I love photographers Annette Pehrsson and Hannah Davis. I’m also becoming interested in installation and environmental art - Andy Goldsworthy is an environmental artist from Britain whose film Rivers and Tides is just beautiful. I love the idea of art being transitory and I’m beginning to think of ways I can experiment with these ideas in my own work.

What role does fashion play in your work?
I want to get just the right amount of dreaminess, and clothes can either make it or break it. I want the viewer to immerse themselves in my photographs, and sometimes when the clothes are too over the top I find it distracting. As I deal with subjects surrounding childhood, nostalgia and girlhood, clothing is an important and considered contribution to the atmosphere I’m creating.

Interview by Alyssa Garrison
Photos by Yuli Sato

I’ve always been obsessed with my family’s old photo albums; they bring back memories so far gone that sometimes I think I’ll never get them back. On a recent visit with my parents, my dad (while looking for some important papers in a tightly-packed drawer) stumbled upon some albums from his own childhood and teenage years. It was the seventies and eighties; the bell-bottoms were nothing short of epic, the plaids were so bad they were good, and the floral-prints were downright groovy.

Where to begin? Look at those pants (second from the left, like you didn’t already notice)!
Then there’s my grandmother and Auntie Ruth in plaid (on the right). Also note my
Uncle Bill’s hair (centre, back) and that awesome shearling coat in the front row.

Here’s my dad’s mum in a poppy-printed dress, belted at the waist. Spring inspiration?

Well, what do we have here? There’s some wicked-cool knee-high socks with what looks
like a school kilt and a leather jacket. Then there’s the mustard yellow tops (far left, far right), and
my dad in double-denim (front and centre). My cousin Adam sports a bonnet and one-piece sleeper.

Dad’s mum again, this time wearing a simple, navy, nautical-themed outfit.

Auntie Ruth, perfectly happy in purple flowers. If I were in that dress, I’d be smiling too.

I don’t have any recollection of the events at which these photos were taken — I hadn’t yet been born. But somehow, looking at these albums, I’d like to think I was there. I’d like to think my personal style grew from all of these people. Because, after all, I knew my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents before I knew my right shoe from my left.

- Stephanie Fereiro

I’m sure there are a lot of great things about winter, but fashion is not one of them. Everyone gets lost in a sea of slush and blinding flurries and makes the foolish decision to stop caring about fashion and instead focus on, you know, not freezing to death. I just happen to believe that you can do both. I have the perfect film for my inspiration: the stylishly prescient 1980 Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining.

I’m not really a fan of horror movies, but The Shining is a different sort of film. It doesn’t rely on gimmicks or gore; The Shining gets inside your head and really makes you question your perceptions. You can read all about the various symbolic meanings to the film here - is it about alcoholism and spousal abuse? Is it a metaphor for the oppression of Native Americans? Is the Overlook Hotel really haunted, or was Jack Torrance a murderous psychopath all along?

Kubrick was not exactly known for being an easygoing kind of director; he was more of a “demanding-hundreds-of-takes-until-Shelley-Duvall-cries” kind of director. I doubt that wardrobe just happened - it’s much more likely that Kubrick was trying to send the audience visual clues about his characters, at the very least that they are the classic Midwestern lower-middle-class family. Kubrick wants you to watch and think that could be me. And then preferably sleep with the lights on for the following week. The film had the opposite effect on me… I still slept with the lights on for three nights after watching it, but the clothes only inspire my winter outfits. The Torrance family is dressed in such a stereotypically normal style that I find the message goes all the way around and becomes subversively fashion. If nothing else, I just really respect their commitment to fashion even in the face of certain death.

The Torrance family really excel at that Midwest collegiate look - tweed and cable knit for texture, lots of browns and navy blues for colour, key to every struggling writer’s wardrobe.

Wendy Torrance has her best outfit when she first arrives at the Overlook Hotel. I love the cream turtleneck under the corduroy blazer and her skirt is just the perfect length for her boots.

My other favorite Wendy Torrance outfit comes after the phone goes dead - a yellow sweater and flared blue jeans. I couldn’t get a close up, but I think she might be wearing CLOGS. Clogs! So fashion forward. This is exactly the sort of 1970s look that I love.

The real sartorial star of this movie, though, is Danny. He has a seemingly never-ending wardrobe of letterman jackets, hand-knit sweaters, and plaid button-up shirts that I would gladly steal.

I’m not going to recommend accessorizing with knives though.

I feel it is my responsibility to remind you that warmth and fashion can go hand in hand, and to please keep not freezing to death high on your list of priorities. Gloves, scarves, and hats are necessary for surviving the winter. Don’t repeat Jack Torrance’s fatal mistake.

- Haley Mlotek

The feeling of anticipation in a darkening movie theatre is generally universal. On this occasion I was more eager than usual. A few weeks prior I had seen a superbly edited trailer featuring a rapid succession of beautiful shots from the upcoming film, A Single Man. Being a self-proclaimed cinephile, my pulse quickened with the emotional reminders of great cinematic experiences past. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed, but not for the reasons you’d think….

A Single Man takes place in Los Angeles at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Adapted (from a Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name), directed, and produced by legendary fashion lord and first time filmmaker Tom Ford, it is a solemn tale of a man coming to grips with the painful loss of the love of his life. Colin Firth’s heart-breaking performance is touching and the stuff the best dramas are made of (and just as an aside, it was nice to see Firth challenged by a role that was not a type-cast of Jane Austen’s impenetrable Mr. Darcy).

However, the driving force of the film is the cinematography and the overall vision of Ford as auteur. Every shot from beginning to end is, without question, absolutely beautiful. It is specifically Ford’s background in fashion as a designer, photographer, and creative director that shines through; after all, he mastered the creation of perfect images in an industry where image is everything. He brings this same attention to detail to all the visual elements in the film.

From the shock of a woman’s red lipstick, and the sweat beading on men playing tennis, to the profound ugliness of make-up plastered on a woman of a certain age, this film revels in the details. I cannot help but remember one scene in particular that occurs towards the end of the film: A shot is taken from above of Firth lying on the floor. For a few seconds a pair of shiny black shoes breaches the frame. Those shoes function as a subtle emotional signifier that I am sure, in another director’s hands, would not have existed.

But by now you must be wondering, if this movie was such a thing of beauty, why was I disappointed? Well it turns out too much beauty is not a good thing; after a while, the steady march of gorgeous images just became a distraction, competing with the narrative, rather than complementing it. As one critic put it, “[It] is overbearingly aesthetic…. [You] are not able to enter the story emotionally because of the level of the aesthetic care in each scene.” In some instances that aesthetic care feels pretentious and contrived. This is also apparent in the casting of minor characters, who are so over-the-top good looking they could only be models.

As a viewer, I want to be able to relate to the people on screen. They shouldn’t be the glossy super-humans found in magazine spreads, blank canvases to be idealized and desired. Yes, this is film and, on some level, fantasy, but Ford’s perfect specimens are more akin to waxed dolls than humans. No longer simply a better looking version of real life, their aesthetic demands so much focus, the story these characters ought to be telling gets lost.

It is imperfection and spontaneity that can make a work of beauty go from good to great; too much flawlessness is boring. But if my problem with Tom Ford’s first outing as a filmmaker is that, in his naivety, he filled it to the brim with too much pretty, well, I can’t wait for his next project.

Then we’ll see if he can learn to edit his fashion mega-lord tendencies…

- Anisha Seth